The present invention relates to a control system for franking machines.
In conventional manner, franking machines are designed to enable major users to print stamps on postal items to be posted corresponding to the fees which the sender needs to pay to ensure that said postal items arrive at their destinations without any additional fees being due. Such franking machines totalize the franked values corresponding to the stamps printed and so franking machine use is very closely monitored, since the high throughout of which these machines are capable could lead to very large financial losses for the organization which collects the postage fees, in the event of the machines being used improperly.
Two parallel methods are used to do this, one being based on pre-payment of the values to be franked, and the other on post-payment. Conventionally, in the first case, franking machines cease to operate when the total of franked values reaches the pre-paid value, thereby requiring users to regularly "re-fill" their machines in order to prevent them from going out of service. In one known embodiment, transportable meters act as monitoring instruments and the user must remove these meters from the machines and convey them to the postal Administration for re-filling.
In the second case, the user provides regular detailed statements of the franking performed by each machine, and these statement must immediately be transmitted to the postal Administration under pain of inconvenient sanctions and on-site inspection of the meter units of the machines which inspections may be performed at any moment by employees of said postal Administration.
This method has the particular drawback of requiring both the user and the postal Administration to perform a considerable amount of bookkeeping and checking work in respect of the statements and, in practice, complicated and highly time-consuming procedures have to be used.
Both of the methods outlined above are thus capable of being improved to the advantage both of the postal Administration and of users by replacing difficult and inconvenient procedures requiring considerable human intervention, in particular for accounting and verification purposes, by procedures which are much simpler and which only require limited human intervention.